Data Driven Content Strategy and Patient Journey Mapping Can Deliver Great Outcomes

It’s not enough to just use medical content for your healthcare business. By using data driven strategy as well as implementing medical content within the wider framework of patient journey mapping, healthcare businesses can deliver great outcomes.


Introduction

The healthcare industry is slowly waking up to realize just how important it is to have a web presence in today’s digital age. A website is now quickly becoming the first place where a patient forms an impression about you and is where the patient journey in today’s day is starting.

As more and more patients take to the web to find which healthcare provider they wish to receive treatment from, it is imperative that healthcare businesses take full advantage of the digital tools at their fingertips to make sure they come out on top.

But as this adoption has come late in the journey, healthcare businesses are still not using these tools to their fullest potential. Many healthcare organizations don’t realize the fact that their website can be used in tandem with patient journey mapping to deliver great outcomes.

Patient Journey Mapping

Patient Journey Mapping is the process of visualizing the entirety of the healthcare journey that a patient takes when they start interacting with a healthcare organization. The operative clause there was, “when they start interacting”.

Today’s patients are not the patients of old. Their interactions with a healthcare business don’t start when they make an appointment or when they step into a healthcare facility. As we discussed, patients today find their healthcare providers through the internet. So their first interaction with a healthcare provider is when they see the healthcare organization’s website or web presence.

The content that is present on the website, the way it is presented, and the quality of content all have a huge impact on the patient experience since it is the very start of interactions that a patient has.

By optimizing the content and revealing the insights with patient journey mapping, healthcare businesses can deliver much higher patient outcomes through easy yet incredibly effective steps.

While healthcare professionals may scoff at the thought of optimized content improving patient outcomes, it has been seen that better patient experiences (which we are improving on through better patient engagement here) result in higher healthcare outcomes.

Content Strategising

So how exactly does a healthcare business optimize its content? You may have heard the terms like ‘search engine optimization’ and ‘user experience’ floating around somewhere on the internet in the past few years. To condense an incredibly vast topic into a single line – data driven content is using SEO and UX tools to ensure that the medical websites are performing the best that they can.

Through the analysis of patient journeys with patient journey mapping, the usage of SEO tools, and the further refinement of the UX (user experience) on the website, healthcare businesses dramatically improve their patient experience on their website. How? Let’s break it down.

With patient journey mapping, healthcare businesses understand the pitfalls that patients have been facing in their healthcare journeys. Let’s say for example; many patients are eating food before blood work or lab tests that require them to be on an empty stomach. This causes the patients to be sent back and the tests to be rescheduled, resulting in more frustration and stress on the patients’ end.

Now based on this insight, we can ensure that our healthcare website has a clear section that mentions the dos and don’ts of such a test and the important information that a patient would need before any such procedure. This information can be sent to the patient via email, mobile notification, etc., in addition to being communicated verbally. This will reduce the chances of the patient having a communication gap.

We can also introduce medical content SEO to this information so that if a patient, not just one who is seeking treatment at our healthcare organization, looks for this query (let’s say: “how to prepare for a colonoscopy”) our website will show up at the top with the relevant information. Our existing patients will be happy to see their queries resolved in a timely and effortless manner, while patients of other healthcare organizations will be more willing to consider our healthcare business as an alternative source of treatment for them due to us providing them with valuable information that they needed.

These steps, which may be considered inconsequential by many healthcare providers, add up over time and result in much better healthcare experiences for patients. They also increase patient engagement by way of opening up communication and informational channels to the patients. These result in higher outcomes in healthcare settings.

Conclusion

Using content strategy and patient journey mapping are two measures that healthcare businesses need to use in order to drive better patient outcomes. Strategised content plans allow healthcare businesses to carefully target the audience that they are trying to reach and start cultivating more leads for their business.

But more importantly, a good content strategy allows healthcare businesses to increase patient engagement through easier comprehending content, valuable information, and providing information faster.

Using a data driven approach to content in conjunction with patient journey mapping allows healthcare businesses to improve the patient experience in all spheres and thus, improve the outcome results they provide.

BraveLabs helps healthcare businesses with all their content needs and also provides an expert implementation of patient journey management tools in their business. Contact us today to learn more.

 

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